Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and a method to provide a quantitative metric to identify conditions that may cause a false negative finding in a leak survey using an infrared (IR) camera, and therefore determining if the leak survey conducted using the IR camera is invalid or valid.
Description of the Related Art
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires certain industrial facilities to routinely check for leaks of gases (or vapors) from process equipment such as valves, pumps, connectors, etc. (referred to as “components”). The EPA regulations that govern these leak checks are generally referred to as Leak Detection and Repair, or LDAR. The LDAR regulations require each component being leak checked one, twice or four times a year. The following discussion identifies and addresses the shortcomings that are intrinsic to the leak detection methods in current LDAR programs.